Thursday, June 13, 2013

Poet Lord Byron once said, “We of the craft are all crazy.
Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less
touched.” He should know. Lord Byron is the poster child for bipolar poets.
Mood disorders, including bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic-depression,
occur with a vastly higher frequency among creative people. Dr. Kay Redfield
Jamison, a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins Medical School, herself
bipolar, wrote about this in Touched with
Fire, Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

Being diagnosed with any disorder is a terrifying
experience. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in November 2004. I was just
beginning to get back into writing after my kids started school full time. I
was terrified what this meant for my future aspirations of being a writer.

I took great comfort that the list of writers who are
believed to have suffered from mood disorders included many of the people who
inspired me to write, including many speculative fiction writers--Hans
Christian Anderson, James Barrie, Samuel Clemens, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley
and Robert Louis Stevenson. Handel composed The
Messiah in 24 days in a manic episode. Everyone is familiar with the mood
swings of Van Gogh. What is remarkable is if you line up his paintings
chronologically, you can witness these. His paintings are evidence of his
moods.

When someone is manic, there brain scans light up. This is
called the Christmas Tree brain. When neurons fire, the brain makes
connections. Normally, a person makes connections between A, B and C. For a
manic person, we have to make sense of A, B, C, M, Q, T and Z. This helps drive
our creativity.

Depression also affects creativity. We all have to make
sense of the world. Mood disorders affect our perception of reality. That is
the hardest part of being bipolar for me. It is hard enough to trust your own
perception. When I am manic or depressed, I know my perception is off. It is
hard to even know when I am manic or depressed. It took years of therapy for me
to recognize the warning signs. The highs of mania and the lows of depression
have to be reconciled with the times I am level. All this gives me an
interesting perspective of the world and also drives creativity.

When I was diagnosed, I was terrified what being medicated
would do to my creativity. That list of amazing writers weren’t medicated. I
came up with some wild ideas while I was manic. How could I write, if I
couldn’t come up with ideas? What I was unable to see was I came up with
amazing universes when I was manic and I could stay up and write for hours and
hours, but what I wrote was unintelligible to others. These great ideas were
impossible for others to follow since I jumped around a lot.

I agreed to seek therapy and take medication because I
didn’t want to hurt my family. If I lost my creativity, that was a price I was
willing to pay. It would tear me apart, but nothing was more important than my
children having a stable upbringing.

What I didn’t realize was being medicated wasn’t going to
kill my creativity. It made it so it was more accessible to others. Being
medicated doesn’t mean I’m always level, though I joke I take drugs to prevent
what others take drugs to feel. Being manic can be compared to being on crystal
meth. Being medicated means my life is manageable and my highs aren’t so high
and my lows aren’t so low. The times I am level is much greater.

Years of therapy taught me how to use these to my benefit.
When I am manic, I am big idea girl. I come up with some amazing things. I
can’t write, since what I write will be so disjointed, but I can do mind maps
and research. I love researching when I’m manic. Net surfing is a manic
person’s paradise. I can surf from one thing to another. It is also a great
time to read, since I get so obsessive, I shut out the world. Reading is an
important part of writing.

When I am depressed, I can’t write either. It goes beyond
writer’s block. I have trouble remembering words or anything for that matter.
Writing becomes an act in frustration. There are better ways to spend my time.
The world slows down and I’m hypercritical. This is the perfect time to edit.

Then when I am fairly level, I write. I take all those big
ideas and edits and turn them into a book that others will enjoy.

Thank you FF&P for having me. You are one of the
important parts of my support network. Thanks to you, my debut book, The Mark of Abel, came outDecember 2012, a full eight years after I was
diagnosed and thought I would never be able to make my dream of being a
published writer come true.

Blurb for The Mark of Abel:

Lucifer is fed up with humanity. He created hell to deter evil but man’s inhumanity is only escalating. He just wants to return home to heaven and Eve, but ever since that little problem in the Garden of Eden, the Pearly Gates remain firmly shut to him. It doesn’t help that he’s the first vampire, an abomination in God’s sight.

Fortunately, two thousand years ago his estranged brother, Jesus, gave him a prophecy--The path back to heaven can be found in terrors in the night turned into art and transformed by divine wisdom. Seems simple enough. The artist even bears a symbol so he knows who she is. If only she would stop dying every time he finds her.

Janie’s a frustrated artist and college art teacher who wants two things—aguy she can show her paintings to and a night without nightmares. Each nightmare plagues her until she paints it. She doesn’t realize these paintings are key to unlocking her destiny, one that could redeem the original fallen angel.

Bio: A very good friend of Viola Ryan in high school said,
“You don’t think outside the box. You blow the thing up.” Sometimes boxes need
exploding. That’s why she’s here. She has a whole bag of C4 and isn’t afraid to
use it. She’s blessed with people who treasure her eccentricities or at least
put up with them.

Sometimes the box can be a cozy place. Without some sort of
stability, her two daughters’ and her life would be unmanageable. That
stability comes from her husband. He’s the rock holding her family together.

On the flip side, his career is anything but stable. He’s a
Chief Marine Safety Technician in the US Coast Guard. They’ve lived from
Kittery, Maine to Yorktown, Virginia. Fortunately, the moves have all been on
the east coast. Then again, the Coast Guard tends to guard the coast.

Her oldest daughter (15) was born on Cape Cod, not far from
Plymouth. Massachusetts. Her youngest (11) was born in Yorktown, Virginia, down
the road from Williamsburg. Viola jokes they’re doing the colonial America
tour.

3 comments:

Thank you for sharing your story. Even though I don't know you I feel proud of your achievement. Your story is an inspiration to so many more writers who live at various points on the bipolar and depressive arcs. What a wonderful achievement! :) xxx

Thank you. Sometimes I think about forming a bipolar writers support group. Writer's block can be bad enough, but when you are depressed, it knocks you out. Sometimes my only goal of the day is to be functional.